Valley of the Suns Season Awards

1st Place

James Harden (71)

How does one win MVP over a player who averaged a triple-double? The answer is simple.

Play even better.

James Harden moving to point guard resulted in Houston producing one of the top-10 offenses of all-time. An offense that raked in a 114.7 offensive rating. A rating that beats out some of the best offenses ever including the ’04-’05 Suns and ’15-’16 Golden State Warriors.

James Harden’s Rockets bomber offense topped the NBA in an insane amount of offensive categories:

• 1st in three pointers attempted (40.3)
• 1st in second chance points per game (31)
• 2nd in points per game (115.3)
• 2nd in true shooting percentage (59.7%)
• 3rd in assists per game (30.4)
• 3rd in pace per game (102.54)
• 3rd in points per pick and roll possession (0.95)

The list could go on forever but we need to get back to Harden. Without Harden’s excelled play none of this would be possible.

The strongest and most basic arguments for Harden as MVP over Westbrook is team success and and stat padding. No player since 1976 has ever won an MVP while being worse than a 4th seed in the playoffs. It has become the gold standard for the MVP race. You must be one of the best players on one of the best teams in the league. The Thunder are the 6th seed and have eight more losses than the Rockets. Even with Westbrook playing well the supporting cast is mediocre at best. Frankly, if a player is to be even considered an MVP they need to be able to elevate their team record beyond “just out of playoff contention.” The gap from the Thunder to the Rockets is much greater then the Thunder from missing the post season.

To further play devil’s advocate against Westbrook’s case for MVP, one must acknowledge the elephant in the room: the blatant, obvious, and at times disgusting stat padding by the Thunder in order to get Westbrook his triple-doubles. The worst being in a blow out loss against the Suns. Down 25 points with two minutes left in the game Westbrook and the rest of the Thunder’s starting lineup was still out there jacking up contested shots in an attempt to get Westbrook his final two assists. Westbrook was ignoring wide open shots to pass to double teamed teammates. It got so bad that the Suns started intentionally fouling his teammates just to make sure everyone knew his madness had to stop. It was not just that game though. It has been an all season occurrence.

Credit Reddit user /u/ln3012 for the evidence. If the argument for Westbrook for MVP is “he has to win MVP! The man averaged a triple-double for goodness sake!” than that is ridiculous. Westbrook leads the league in uncontested rebounds at 8.5 per game. That is 2.1 rebounds ahead of Harden and more than the 12 starting centers between Westbrook and Harden. Westbrook also contests the third least amount of three-point attempts in the league. Only Rudy Gobert and Hassan Whiteside had less contested three’s per contest and those two players are centers! If Westbrook were to average the same amount of uncontested rebounds as Harden would this even be a debate? The only reason Westbrook is in this conversation is because the historic nature of an arbitrary individual achievement.

Harden is the MVP this season. It is that simple.